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Tuesday Talks!
Join me for weekly discussions about ALL things education...from preschool through high school! As a mom, Speech Language Pathologist, and educator, I share my personal experiences related to each week's topic in relatable and informative ways.
My message about education is powerful: Reflecting on what is and making waves to cause change!
Tuesday Talks!
Literacy in Schools: How did the US get so far behind? (Part 2)
Send us your thoughts about this week's episode!
We continue our discussion about the literacy crisis in American schools and the problems with "cueing" methods that teach children to guess words rather than sound them out.
• A real-life example of a sixth-grade student who struggled with reading due to being taught with picture-based guessing strategies
• The critical importance of third grade as a reading benchmark and how falling behind creates a compounding problem
• How to determine if your child's school is using ineffective reading methods
• Warning terms to watch for: reading recovery, cueing, Fontas and Pinnell, and whole language
• The financial incentives for curriculum companies to sell ineffective reading programs
• How affluent parents compensate by hiring outside tutors while other children continue to struggle
• States implementing phonics-based instruction are seeing dramatic improvements in reading scores
• The connection between reading methods and spelling ability - children can't spell words they can't decode
• Companies are now changing their approach due to pressure, not because they care about children
Check out the "Sold a Story" podcast for a deeper investigation into this issue, and please share this episode with other parents and educators to raise awareness about effective reading instruction.
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Tuesday Talks is hosted by Dr. Tiffany. She has been a Speech/Language Pathologist for 20 years. She's also a speaker and educational consultant. Dr. Tiffany hosts webinars and in-person workshops for teachers and parents.
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Hey, hey hey, what's up, dr Tiff, happy Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Happy Tuesday to you, coach Val. Thanks for everybody joining us tonight for this week's episode. We're going to be doing a part two of what we talked about last week. We talked about literacy in schools and the podcast sold a story. So if you hadn't listened to part one, continue joining us tonight for part two, but make sure you go back and listen to part one because it'll give you a little bit more background on what we're going to be talking about tonight. I had a couple people reach out to me after last week's episode in shock to just say I didn't know that this was going on. I didn't know that this was a way to teach reading. I didn't know that schools were doing this. Why are they doing this? How can I find out if my kid's school is doing this? What were some of the comments that you got after last week's episode?
Speaker 1:Well, I actually went to dinner with a friend of mine and she didn't tell me at the beginning that she had seen the episode, but she had. She just ended up talking about, of course, our kids, naturally, were moms, and we talked about her oldest son our kids, naturally, we're moms, and we talked about her oldest son, who is currently in the sixth grade. Well, she let me know that he had had some major problems with reading. This was a shock to me because, if I'm not mistaken, he's currently like in some high level classes or gifted classes, and so when she said this, I was like what? And so she continued to say and explain that around what's wrong? Maybe third or fourth grade, when she realized that he was not able to read very well. And I guess I'm pretty sure because he is actually super smart, because he is actually super smart, like he has been able to cover it up a whole lot.
Speaker 1:And once she found out, she described how he had been taught to read. And it was exactly what we talked about on the last episode with Soda's story. It was not phonics based, it was a lot of look at the pictures, what do you think the word means, or what the word is, and she says she was so shocked and disappointed the you know the student actually ended up needing a lot of extra help in order to get him to where he needs to be. She said now he's okay, he's fine. But there's still that underlying concern because, as a parent, you think things are going great and well and you have trust in the school and the teachers and what they're teaching your kids, the curriculum they're using to find out that, oh my God, I feel like I missed years of you know being trusting and then come to find out this wasn't what my kid needed and he's not where he's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that is so sad to hear because we know every school year is jam-packed with new information. You hit the ground running after the first week of school and you've gotten through all the rules and you know stuff for that grade level. You are hitting the ground running. There is a lot of ground to cover in a very short amount of time, and if your kid starts getting behind in an area they're playing catch up while the pace is still moving forward. So imagine that, just that visual. You're trying to play catch up to get up to speed on what you should already know, but the conveyor belt is still moving. You're still going to be responsible for learning the new stuff too.
Speaker 2:That's a tough spot to be in, and we know that reading is a very critical skill. It's embedded in every single subject, from pre-K all the way up through college. If your kid decides to go to college and so to be at his grade level and be advanced in some areas, but the reading is what he was behind in, to me that's like the red flag right there. That's like something is off, and a lot of times the kids are blamed. Right, you're not paying attention, you're not focusing, your parents aren't practicing with you at home. You're not really doing your homework the way you should be. We do the finger pointing, but in this case, what we learned about on the podcast and in your friend's case, it was the school, it was the curriculum, it was the modality, the method of reading instruction. That was the problem. And unfortunately in public schools, until a lot of kids start showing the same types of challenges, the school is not going to reflect and be like oh it's us, don't worry, it's not your kids, us, if it's just your kid which a lot of parents you know walk around thinking, oh my gosh, it's just, it's got to be just my. But you start talking to some other parents and you'll find out very quickly that it's usually not just your kid.
Speaker 2:And with reading, we know third grade is a huge marker that if your child is not reading on grade level by third grade, there's so much research out there that says that they will continue to be behind as they get older. We just did an episode a couple of weeks ago about a high school student who graduated with a nice GPA and could not read. So this stuff is happening quite frequently and if you haven't listened to part one yet, we are talking about. It's a cued reading system where, instead of asking kids to sound out words, kids are being asked to use context clues look at the pictures, guess what the word could be, instead of being instructed to sound it out, because phonics is not being heavily emphasized. And if you're thinking to yourself, oh no, my kids' school would never do that. In this podcast, they went to the most affluent communities with the most posh, rich parents and those schools were using this cued method of reading and what they found was parents were taking their kids outside tutors.
Speaker 1:Because they had the money.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So when I heard that part, it just my wheels started spinning because it's like yet another, yet another case of a situation where your socioeconomic status provides you with a certain privilege that gives you an edge and advances you in life beyond your peers, and it's so subtle, so subtle. It's one of those things where, just because they had the money then they were able to fix their kid's problem and it's not fair to the other students who don't. Because in America we pride ourselves on everybody is able to have access to a free and appropriate education that we're going to provide publicly all kids an opportunity to learn how to read, to learn how to write and to learn the math skills that they need to be successful, along with a plethora of other things. Well, now we see that that's not happening, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So any parent out there, auntie, uncle, if you have young kids in those grade levels where they're really laying the foundation for reading so you're talking about kindergarten, first, second grade ask your son, daughters, teachers, ask your own kid. What do you do when you get to a word you don't know Because we learned. Last week. Val asked her own son this and he said oh, let me think about what makes sense there. That's a telltale sign.
Speaker 1:I know you were shocked.
Speaker 2:I was no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:We're not doing that, because even as a person who I don't, I've never taught a child how to read. I have many skills. That's not one of them Instinctively. If I was going to help a kid read, let's say I was going to go volunteer at a school and sit in the classroom and help a kid read. They get out their little book and they get to a word that they don't know Instinctively, I would ask them to sound out the word. But this method that was used across this country is still being used to this day is not prompting kids to sound out the words. They are asking them to look for clues in the picture, to look for clues in the sentence, to think about what makes sense. And my response to all that is none of that makes sense, absolutely none of it, because you know, as kids get older, there are no pictures in the book to look at. So what are they going to do once the pictures disappear, if you've given them this crutch of looking at the picture to try to guess the word? So just think about that.
Speaker 2:If your kid is struggling in reading, and has been throughout this school year, send your teacher an email, ask your kid, take out a book with them at home. See what they do when they get to a word they don't know. Ask the teacher what she does as part of her instruction when a kid doesn't know the word. But the terms that schools are using to describe this type of reading curriculum is reading recovery, excuse me, also cued reading, the Fontas and Pinnell books that little kids come home with, where they're put on a certain reading level, which we'll talk about those a little bit tonight as well. Also, looking at whole language is also a term that this approach has been gone by. So listen for some of those key terms. But if you can't remember that, ask the simple question what do you do when you get to a word you don't know? See how your kids respond to that. Or just pull out a book and just watch what they do.
Speaker 2:And if they are using pictures, if they're trying to guess what word makes the best sense. There you got a problem on your hands, because that has been researched and debunked as an effective way of teaching kids how to read. It is ineffective, hands down. What they discovered in this podcast and through the research is that those are things looking at the picture, guessing using context clues, those are things that bad readers do when they don't know how to read. Those are things that bad readers do when they don't know how to read. Those are the strategies that they use. So why would we teach those strategies that bad readers use to kids who are learning how to read?
Speaker 1:you know somebody reminded me of this the quote that we love to use with athletes and in academics practice makes perfect, and at some point along the way I've gotten rid of that one and substituted it with practice makes better. Eventually Now because there is a third iteration, and especially to go along with these ineffective reading strategies is practice makes permanent. And so if you take these skills of bad readers and you teach these students to use those skills and you're reinforcing them over and over and over again, they're practicing and making it permanent. What happens is, once they get to a certain age, the older they get, the harder it is to reverse things that you've learned. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. It's not that you can't teach them, it's just that it's going to take a whole lot more effort, a whole lot more time and energy to try to reverse the things that they need to get rid of so that they can learn what they need to learn to be successful Y'all. They need to learn to be successful Y'all.
Speaker 1:We do not. We cannot afford, especially a certain group of kids Black and Brown kids, low socioeconomic status kids. We cannot afford to stay silent on this issue. The lady I just talked to in between last Tuesday and this Tuesday, between last Tuesday and this Tuesday. This is current. That example is current. Currently in the sixth grade means that was only three years ago for him. We're still in this and it's a shame.
Speaker 2:It is a shame. And back to what I mentioned at the beginning we don't have time to waste in public school. The pace is very fast. We need to use effective teaching strategies consistently because we don't have time to play catch up. Because if you're playing catch up you're missing out on the new things that you're supposed to be learning. So now you're in this hamster wheel, never really making any progress, just slowly, slowly, you know, making some moves, so we don't have time to just see how it works.
Speaker 2:If you get wind that this is how your kid is being instructed how to read, you need to speak up. You need to let that teacher know you want a phonics-based program. You want them to learn to read by sounding words out. Like I said before, I've never taught a kid how to read. If I went to volunteer at a school, instinctively that is what I would do with a kid that had trouble with a word sound it out. That is the way it has been done. And the way they talked about it in this podcast was that teaching phonics wasn't cute. It seemed very rote. You go through the letter sounds wasn't cute. Like it seemed very rote. You know you go through the letter sounds.
Speaker 2:Kids really want to read up a book and read, but we're sticking them in this phonics based instruction and they can't read the books. And so what this approach did was it helped kids look like they were reading. You know, part of this curriculum is picking up that book and having kids look at a book in kindergarten that they've never read before, but they want them to look like avid readers. They're not reading, so we have to ask questions when things don't make sense. Another thing that they talked about in this podcast was that scientists have long since known that reading is not a natural process. It has to be taught through phonics-based instruction, and this three-queuing method teaches kids to skip decoding and it leads to long-term struggles.
Speaker 2:They might pick up a book and look like they're reading because they're using the picture and maybe the pattern. We've all seen those books with maybe kindergartners. You know the rat is mad. The rat is sad, like every. You know they picked up on the pattern and so it looks like they're reading. And every parent wants their kid to learn how to read. Heck, every teacher wants to be the one that's like hey, in my class, my kids, they start to learn how to read quickly. You really that's a bragging point, right, but there's no longevity there. It's something that looks really good. It's like a nice firecracker it sparks and it looks great for a moment and it dies out very quickly, because that's not a concept and a way of learning that's long lasting, do you?
Speaker 1:know what I mean. Absolutely. I think about it like this. I'm trying to rationalize, like how could someone have come in and what could they have said and explained to make people think, oh, spending less time on the sounds of the letters to make the words is a great idea, and I kind of I mean I couldn't justify it in my mind, to be honest.
Speaker 1:But I did think about how, when you mentioned the bragging points of the teachers or even the parents oh, my kid can read at three years old the incentive for that could possibly be a reason why. Because when kids have to stop and decode the word and sound it out, that takes longer and more time that we already we say we don't have in the school system. The teachers don't have. Within the school day, especially elementary school, you have to hit every single subject throughout your day and then you know you get just 15 to 20 minutes of planning for that. So I, in that aspect, I could see the draw in the pool for like, oh, this is going to make this easier so more of my students can learn how to read. So we're not saying that this has been done like maliciously or with ill intent.
Speaker 2:for the most part, In the podcast, the teachers that they interviewed about these methods. They really thought that they were doing what was best for those kids, and the reason why they felt that is because these companies that build these curriculum they do such a great job of selling an educated teacher, a school superintendent. They do an amazing job selling them on their product. It comes down to money. If you can get an entire district to start using your program, that is, a class set of every piece of instructional material that you need for that grade level, imagine the money. We're talking about millions of dollars here and what happens is these companies develop their products, reach out to educational systems, these conferences that superintendents go to, conferences that teachers go to. They're there and they're like look at this, we get kids to read faster. This is what we're doing, this is how we're making it happen.
Speaker 2:And every district wants to see their reading scores on these end of year tests go up. They want to see that because that is what drives the impact of their school. Like we talked about here, before you go by a house, you look at the school scores in your area. That's being pulled from these state tests. I know here in Georgia they score them one out of 10 and your school is a one out of 10. That's not good and that's typically being driven by test scores. So you go to these conferences and they are showing you that they have the latest, greatest way to get kids in your district reading faster.
Speaker 2:And these curriculum companies are making millions of dollars. Schools are investing very heavily and they're doing so without really reviewing the research. They're doing it without reviewing the research and so the reading industry doesn't have a lot of regulation. I could make a program today that says I can get your kid reading in six weeks. Come by this program and I can get a very nice production team to put together a very pretty video. I can get some kids pointing at books, a couple of cameos of parents and how it worked for them, and maybe it just worked for them. But I haven't done my longitudinal research study. I haven't taken a sample of students and children to see how effective, how valid, how reliable my reading program is. I can stick a label on it and say whatever I want, because nobody's regulating this industry. It's just schools are being asked to.
Speaker 2:You know, hey, pick what makes sense If you've ever been in a school district where, all of a sudden it seemed like a brand new curriculum came in and wiped something else out. It's usually because somebody found out hey, what we've been doing this is absolutely no good, and it probably took them a school year or maybe two to find something else to come in and replace it. And guess who are continuing to be experimented on in the schools? Your kids, my kids, our kids. They're the ones that are still stuck with this curriculum that they know is bad. But remember, they've invested millions of dollars.
Speaker 2:What does every school district talk about every year? Budget Budget? What's the budget Teachers want to raise? You know, class sizes are getting bigger, buses, we need bus drivers, all these things. And they've now forked out millions of dollars on this type of curriculum. They're going to be hard pressed to pivot. You're going to have to come to them with some real, live, hard evidence that it is doing mass damage. Remember, if it's just happening to one kid, that's not enough to create change. It's got to be happening to a bunch of kids. For them to course correct after spending millions of dollars, that's going to take a lot. And if they haven't done their research up front, then they are going to need to take out all that material, throw it all out and now spend more on this new curriculum, and that's what a lot of school districts have done. They talked about that in the podcast. What did you think about that part, val?
Speaker 1:Well, they ended up talking about this ed reports that I really hadn't heard about until I listened to this podcast, and probably because I was the classroom teacher so that wasn't part of my job description. But again, people in school don't have the time to do what they need to do like at any level, to be really honest, from the janitors in the school building, the secretaries all the way up, teachers all the way up to admin at the central office level Like there's too much stuff that is being pushed on the school systems. And so this company, ed Review, decides that they're going to help, and the way they decided to help was they wanted to put a list together of reviewed curriculum. Around this time the Common Core standards were happening, that was becoming a thing, and so they claimed their stake on reviewing curriculum to see if it met all of, or how well it met all of, the common core standards. Why would this draw the administrators, the district level leaders? Because they don't have time, so they're going to go out and reach for anything that makes their job easier.
Speaker 1:This company did what I don't have time to do anyway. Okay, I'm just going to look at their list. Their list is going to become our list, because you know they said that that's what they did. But what they didn't realize is the company did not look for validated research based curriculums and so a lot of the curriculums that had this queuing system, this whole language approach, make the list for the states to put on their list, for the schools to pick from. And so I've said it before, schools always push be research-based, be data-driven, and it didn't happen in these cases.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like you said and we mentioned this a couple times tonight schools are taking these companies at their word. They are not hiring or employing educational researchers to dig into the statistics that go behind what these companies are saying, and so just relying on the schools to do a good job of picking curriculum that will really help most kids, because some kids are going to need something different, but a curriculum is going to help most kids, because some kids are going to need something different, but a curriculum is going to help most kids. We got to start asking questions as parents and if something doesn't sound right, ask some questions. Because the first time I listened to this podcast and we're talking about cuing kids how to read, not teaching them how to sound words out, my mind immediately went to okay, so if they get really good at reading using this cued reading approach, what happens when they have to spell? How are they going to spell if they have not learned letter sounds?
Speaker 2:There's no answer there. If you're telling them to look at the picture for clues. If you're telling them to look at the picture for clues, what's going to make sense? Use context clues in the sentence and you're not teaching them how to decode by sounding words out. When it's time for them to start writing, how are they going to know how to spell the words? There's a lot of words.
Speaker 2:They don't Ask me how I know. So. You boosted up reading skills, but now you're spelling. Those scores are going to tank because the kids haven't learned letter sounds. It makes absolutely.
Speaker 1:I just I feel some people who might be listening to this thinking well, so what If they don't know how to spell? We got Google now.
Speaker 2:We got AI now no one's thinking that out there listening, tell me you're not.
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to say that it's about communicating. Like, in essence, if we like, just boil this down this is about communication and how well a person can communicate with someone else, and so we have various means of and forms of communication. Well, writing is like main, like tops, like if you are in up to date with the new century, 21st or 22nd, whatever century we in. Okay skills, you have to be able to communicate. You have to be able to communicate. So when you put words into chat, gpt, when you put questions into Google and you're doing these searches yeah, it's gotten really good at guessing what it is you're trying to make but at the same time, you are running the risk of being misinterpreted. You're running the risk of causing confusion. You're running the risk of just people not understanding what it is you're trying to say. And kids are going through this right now. It's very frustrating for them because they don't understand why the other person the teacher, the adult doesn't understand what they wrote. Maybe it makes no sense, right?
Speaker 2:It makes no sense and the reason why we know that. You know, not only research says that that was an awful way to teach kids. It is an awful way to teach kids how to read. These companies that were all about this queuing method. They're now switching it up to say, hey, we were wrong, we had it wrong. We're going to change up our curriculum to emphasize phonics more. And my question is why? What made them start to think, hey, this isn't the right way to teach kids how to read. There's a better way, and I'm going to tell you why. Because they told us in the podcast money. Because states were saying we cannot use this cute reading method anymore. We need all these materials out and we're switching it up and these companies are now again losing millions of dollars switching it up, and these companies are now again losing millions of dollars and like whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, we will switch up our programs. We'll get on board with this science of reading, because that is now the new.
Speaker 2:I don't want to use the term buzzword, because it is a valid method of teaching kids how to read and it's been researched very heavily as a method of teaching kids how to read, but now they are embedding the science of reading techniques into their cued reading curriculum. So just because they take the cued reading out of the title doesn't necessarily mean that they've completely washed their curriculum of it. These companies, they probably do care about kids. They care more about their bottom line, and that's just the truth of the matter. So ask the questions. These companies are switching up States like Mississippi. They switched to a phonics-based reading program and have already seen dramatic improvements in reading scores. Teachers are frustrated because many of them say they weren't ever taught about the science of reading in their teacher training. And so now that this kind of light bulb aha moment has happened from those who have listened to the podcast, done their own research, I think we'll start to see that cued reading phased out more and more. But please know, this is not a topic of a decade ago. This is not a topic of like five years ago. This is still happening right now in schools and ask yourself does it make sense? And if the answer is no, then you need to start asking some follow-up questions. So please, if you haven't checked out part one of this podcast series that we just did two parts please go back, check out part one.
Speaker 2:Listen to the Sold a Story podcast on Apple. It's on Spotify. You can listen to it online as well. They've added some bonus episodes. They've revisited some kids and parents that found out this is the method that their kids were being taught to read and switched over to phonics-based parents teaching their kids at home and have seen such dramatic changes. So phonics is essential. Remember that Decoding words by sounding them out is essential. There's brain research that supports that and our education system is prioritizing bad curriculum over science. So, if it doesn't make sense, ask some questions, because the chances are the school district that picked out that curriculum didn't ask the questions. You might think they did, but they probably didn't. So you need to ask some questions.
Speaker 2:That was a good one. There's so much to say about it, but we are going to end it right there. Please share this episode with a friend, a colleague, another parent. Talk about it in your friend groups, your teacher groups, because this is not something that was happening, it is still happening and it's something that we need to really be aware of to make sure that kids get on the right track as fast as possible, because playing catch up while you're still expected to make progress is hard. It's hard. Thanks for joining us tonight. We'll see you next week. Have a good one, bye.